He laughed again. "Don't forget what is to happen one day with that same machine."
"What is that?"
"I am to swoop down and carry you off. It was your own suggestion, you know."
"But it was to be at the Imperial Review. That doesn't happen again for a year."
"I won't wait that long!"
She turned her head; her eyes sparkled in the caught light. Her fingers were fluttering a square of red paper that had been rolled about her chopsticks. On it was a line of tiny characters. "What is that writing?"
"That is a love-poem," he answered. "You know a Japanese poem has only thirty-one syllables. You find them everywhere and on everything, from a screen to a fire-shovel. I've seen them printed on tooth-picks. Your huckster composes them as he brings the fish from market, and your amah writes them at night by a firefly lantern."
"Can you read it?"
He translated: "I thought my love's long hair drooped down from the gate of the sky. But it was only the shadow of evening."
"How delicately pretty!" she exclaimed. "It's written in kana, the sound-alphabet, isn't it?"